Pre-Season Comes Around Too Quickly For Giggs

The 2007/2008 season saw Ryan Giggs become the 11th person in United’s history to score 11 league goals, beat Sir Bobby Charlton’s record for appearances, win his 10th league title, and lift his 2nd European Cup.

Now 34-years-old, Giggs is coming to the end of his footballing career, and next season will be used more sparingly for the first team, with Nani stepping up as his replacement.
The pre-season training has just begun to get underway and Giggsy admits he is finding it hard.

“Long distance running gets easier as you get older,” said Giggs. “It is just the quicker stuff that is quite hard. We started by seeing where our fitness is at and the treadmill test is quite hard. That will start to build things up. I’m not really looking forward to it but when you’ve done it all before, you just use your experience to get through it. Obviously, last season ended brilliantly for the team and for myself. Although I am not looking forward to pre-season training, it is good to be back.”

How much of a part do you expect Giggs to play for United once the pre-season is over and our next title defence begins?

------------The RoM 2015-16 Season Preview is available for just £5. It includes an EXCLUSIVE interview with Nicky Butt, a Q&A with the country's top journalists about our transfer targets, articles by experts on our new signings, and so much more. All profit goes to Trafford Macmillan so please support this fantastic cause.

Giggs still has big role to play in the next couple of season. His experience is vital during the crunch end. And albeit last season was a poor one by his standards, while watching the season review he has an assist almost every three goals.

It is sad to see him lose his pace, but I think what made it even more frustrating for most fans was that Giggs seemed to lose possession more than in years past. Experience is one thing, but it counts for nothing if you can’t keep possession. I agree that Giggs will have a part to play in the seasons to come and it saddens me that he’ll soon hang up his boots. A true legend.

I disagree with the suggestion that he has “lost” his pace. Giggs is still a very, very fast runner – what he has “lost” is his killer instinct. He rarely attacks opposing defenders. Perhaps that’s because he now “knows” he can’t beat them for pace but even if that were true that’s not the key point – the key point is that he has lost that total self-belief that enabled him to turn on the jets and leave a defender in his wake. Also, and very curiously, he seems to have lost some of his close control, too.

The upshot is that he could – and should – be “refashioned” into a late-game sub. If he were to fully accept that role then he could be devastating against tiring defenders. But, for that to be so, we go back to the question of self-belief.